A Long Post About Prayer and Qualitative Research

One of my favorite authors is Karen Armstrong. I was introduced to her when I was about 23 years old, after a personal investigation into learning more about the institution of religion prompted me to pick up her book A History of God. A few years later I read her autobiography (and I should clarify, I read her amended autobiography which she wrote as a response to her previous work about her time spent in a convent) and felt that in many ways she I shared a kindredness for exploring the mysteries of spirituality and for comparative religion. I bring her up because as of late I have been thinking a lot about what it means to have a prayerful life. This is in part due to the fact that I am so steeped in the academic life that I wonder if these two lives could, in a way, find a place to co-exist. It is also due to the fact that I have been spending much more time outside, and when I am outside, walking, jogging, or riding my bike, I am obviously not directly engaged in my academic thoughts but I am complementing them by moving my body.

Brilliant! Karen Armstrong

Anyway - in her memoir, Karen Armstrong described her life as a writer and researcher as one that connected deeply to her spiritual life, even though it was not a traditional form of religious prayer. She found communion with her interior-life as a researcher, and described academic and non-fiction writing as a form of meditation. This deeply resonated with me (and still does), and her description of this in her memoir has stuck with me since first reading it almost 10 years ago. I include this here because this summer I am taking a qualitative methods research course and am running up against the division between my system of beliefs as an individual who connects with her "interior-life" and also the effort I put into supporting my arguments with evidence. I had to write a letter of introduction about myself for this class, and I took this assignment very seriously as a way to explore what my worldview is and how this informs the way I ask questions and seek understanding. Below are excerpts from that letter:

"...What this article stirred most deeply in me was my own insecurities about my intelligence, thus making me take more notice of the division I maintained between my soul and my mind. I have two distinct ways of living and knowing: what I refer to as my interior-life and the other my mind-life.

The first way of living and knowing is my interior-life, a way where ambiguity resides and knowing and learning are what Dirkx (2008) referred to as a “hard, emotional, messy, uncertain, ambiguous, and ill-structured process” (p. 66). My interior life is often in solitude. It invites a deeper sense of self while working in spaces that are not always comfortable. From this part of my life I have also learned to be very aware of the role that positioning plays in my communal and individual interactions. My interior-life is a listening life...

The second way of living and knowing is my mind-life, where my desire to find an evidence-based reality emerges. Here, my mind works to organize the world into tidy facts and best practices. This way of thinking and knowing for me is in response to my interior-life and the ambiguities it brings. It is also a very conscious attempt to want to discard the role that power plays in knowledge formation because to recognize this correlation, for me, unearths vulnerabilities. Also in this space is a very real attraction I have for a worldview that can show causation and generalizability, all the while knowing it can be potentially harmful, inequitable, and one-dimensional. I am aware of the dangers in this kind of worldview due to my experiences working in the non-profit sector and at the policy and legislative level. Despite this awareness, the clear outline and procedures of this type of post-positivist work both academically and personally help me feel grounded when my questions about the world seem too big. It also symbolizes a position of strength when I fear my interior-life may not be valid."

I am learning more and more how to manage, not so much balance, my life here in Lansing as a student. And since the spring semester ended, I have learned how important it is for me to 1) get outside and MOVE and 2) acknowledge that prayer may take on many different forms in my life. This second point is something I have always known, but how I define prayer (even if at times it is defined as rest) becomes more full and expansive as I explore my own ways of understanding. I expect it will continue to evolve and I am excited to use my qualitative class this summer to approach understanding in a new way.